


Skyline

by zinabug



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Everyone but Lurien is just a mention but the relationships are important so I’m tagging thise, Gen, I’ve been thinking about him a lot, Lots o headcannons here, Lurien is an artist, Lurien with bad eyesight, Pre-Canon, The Infection (Hollow Knight), They/them for Lurien’s butler, also a massive mess, i did a lot of “hey wouldn’t X be funny” and then I made it sad because that’s what I do, no beta we die like PK, of a sort, physically and emotionally, takes place sometime while the pure vessel is still small
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:20:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28974255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zinabug/pseuds/zinabug
Summary: He liked the patterns of the city. They were constant, something he could almost set his clock by, and even without his glasses he could see how each one delicately linked together to build the city from the bottom up. He’d watched them slowly fall apart, pieces of the machine grinding to a halt as one by one, doors were shut and marked with a bright orange X.The infection.Breaking the perfect clockwork chaos of the city. Taking away his future.
Relationships: Lurien the Watcher & Lurien the Watcher's Butler (Hollow Knight), Lurien the Watcher & The Pale King (Hollow Knight), The Hollow Knight | Pure Vessel & Lurien the Watcher
Kudos: 15





	Skyline

**Author's Note:**

> Basically I went “hey wouldn’t it be funny if a character who’s title is the watcher couldn’t see shit without his glasses” and then I wrote about it, got sad, and went on several tangents. Enjoy!

Lurien sighed heavily and pushed his mask up onto his head, blinking several times in the dim light of the top of his watchtower. It was silent besides the rain, illuminated only by the dancing blobs of light that meant candles. Normally, this would be a night for thinking and staring at the city, or perhaps painting, but he had a pounding headache and it was already past the middle of the night. he sincerely doubted any peaceful watching or painting or sleep would happen tonight.

He sighed a second time and started searching around in his robe pockets for his glasses. His mask had been custom made so he could wear both, after all, a watcher should be able to see, but with the frames of the glasses, the edges of the mask obscured his vision around the edges enough to be uncomfortable. He would rather exist in a fuzzy world of color slowly getting clearer as it stretched out away from him then have a small, limited range of clarity. 

He’d gotten used to managing without them, and regardless of if they were on or off, he’d have headaches anyway.

He tried to put his glasses on with one hand, poked himself in the face with the frame, sighed a third time, and used both hands to put them on. 

He blinked, the room sharpening into focus and blurry yellow blobs becoming candle flames. He’d seen it hundreds of times before, but it was always still a little fascinating, even when he was this exhausted. 

The unfortunate thing about putting his glasses on was that he could see how much of a mess his room was. His bed was unmade, art supplies and half-melted candles and books strewn all about the place. He knew exactly where everything was, but that didn’t stop the mess from annoying him. He shoved a book across the floor a couple of inches with his foot and stared at the bed. It looked inviting, even with the blankets in a tangled mess and one of his sketchbooks out on top of it. 

He could easily get his butler to pick up the room, in fact, Lurien had had to expressly forbid them from cleaning. Their own rooms were meticulously tidy. 

Lurien pushed the book a couple more inches to the side, staring at the mess. 

He took his glasses off again. 

The room would be clean eventually, all of his art would have to be put away somewhere and the bed would be made forever. 

Maybe sooner than eventually. 

The pale king’s quiet, somewhat raspy voice echoed in his head, speaking of seals and vessels and infection and captive light, but Lurien pushed it out again and started for his easel. It was set up next to his telescope  _ — he’d leave that set up, after he went, so his butler could sneak as many looks through as they liked —  _ where he would often sit to paint. He could train the telescope on one specific part of the city, or work on something else entirely, because just the rain on the glass was inspiration and reference enough. 

The current painting was of detail work on the top of some tower. Lurien scowled at the grey glob it was without his glasses and picked up the canvas he had been painting on. 

He squinted at it. Nothing about it changed. 

He sighed and leaned it against the wall. He was going to start something else tonight, something that didn’t require him to stare at a tiny bit of filigree for hours. 

Lurien tracked down another canvas and set it down on the easel, sat down on his own stool, which was too tall for him, and stared at the blank canvas. 

His head hurt very badly today. Probably because the king’s palace was so damn bright and everyone there wanted to talk to him. 

If he was sitting at his desk instead of the stool, he would have put his head down on the table. Maybe fallen asleep then and there. Maybe get a good night's rest for once before he’d be sleeping forever. 

Anything for the king, as much as it hurts. 

_ The little vessel, standing on a table in the king's workshop while the king focused on a collection of small metal plates. Lurien tipped his head so his better eye was facing it, smiled at it, and the king had snapped at him to treat it like one of the spoils of thread lining the walls. Ignore it. It doesn’t think. It can’t think.  _

_ Perhaps Lurien had imagined the time the little vessel held onto his robes while they walked, like how a small child would hold your hand.  _

He pushed the canvas aside and slammed open the window, a gust of cold air and rain rushing into the room and blowing out his candles. 

He was going to get soaked. 

Lurien leaned halfway out the window, looking down at the city lights far below, feeling the rain pounding on his head, absolutely drenching him. It was a pleasant pressure, filling his head with the sound and sensation of the raindrops and driving out everything else. 

Even with his glasses, the lights would be dim and blurred through the downpour. 

Water was getting into his room, probably ruining some of the papers on the floor. He ignored it, stayed in the window, watching the city. 

Lurien had the patterns memorized, the shopkeeper who would blow out each of their candles and dim their lamps in a precise order after the second passing of the guard, the time the top window on the second tallest building in the city would turn off, exactly the same every night, the winged sentry who would do two loops around a spire before they went in for the night. 

He liked the patterns of the city. They were constant, something he could almost set his clock by, and even without his glasses he could see how each one delicately linked together to build the city from the bottom up. He’d watched them slowly fall apart, pieces of the machine grinding to a halt as one by one, doors were shut and marked with a bright orange X.

The infection. 

Breaking the perfect clockwork chaos of the city. Taking away his future. 

And… 

_ The little vessel, standing blankly at the king’s right hand. Created to be perfect and empty and for nothing else. Chosen among only god knows how many others left to die.  _

_ As much as the king insists that they were empty, were never alive, Lurien watches and sees the great regret welling up inside of him and knows that their pure vessel must be one of hundreds at the least.  _

_ Lurien does not want to know how they were created. Does not want to know where the corpses of the other failed vessels are hidden. _

_ There are some things that even he, the watcher, and Monomon, the archivist and teacher, do not want to know.  _

He tapped his fingers on the windowsill in time with the raindrops. 

Another door part of his patterns had an orange X on it. He had seen it on his way back home, the door of a bug who he would often send someone to purchase paper and paint from. They had changed the color of the curtains in the store window six times a year, and always carefully closed them before they closed up shop. 

He would miss them, even though he never said a word to their face or even saw them up close. Lurien was not very good with people or spoken word and didn’t leave his spire often. He was okay with that. The fewer connections he had, the easier it would be to carry out the king’s wishes. 

He had started shivering some time in the past few minutes. Lurien wanted to stay at the window, but sooner rather than later, his hands would start to get stiff and refuse to warm up again, and then he couldn’t paint even if he wanted too. 

He stepped back and slammed the window shut again, some of the still dry papers fluttering about in the breeze. It instantly got quieter, more hollow sounding. 

Heavier. 

Lurien was colder now too. He shook his head, sending water flying everywhere. 

Maybe he’d get a cold. Then he could avoid going to the white palace again for a few days. It would suck, yes, but he could avoid the bowing and whispers and the king’s quiet voice and the empty eyes of the pure vessel. He could stay home and paint a picture. Maybe of the paint shop, with the shutters still open and art still in the windows, without the bright orange X on the door. 

Oh, who did he think he was kidding. 

Grumbling under his breath, Lurien struggled out of his wet robes and tossed them on the floor with an unpleasant squelching noise. His shirt and vest had stayed mostly dry, but he was still freezing. 

Lurien pulled his pin out of the pile of robes on the floor. A tiny hallownest seal, in dull silver metal. He stared at it for a few seconds. He had the thing memorized, each little scratch and bit of paint he hadn’t managed to get off of it. 

Then he dragged a blanket off the bed, draped it over his shoulders and pinned it in place with the seal. Trailing the blanket behind him, he started wandering around his room, picking up some paint and brushes and a bigger canvas and lighting his candles again. 

This time he didn’t sit next to the telescope. He pushed some rolls of paper off of an armchair by one of his other window, the one he knew his butler liked to sit in.  


_He’d leave the chair here, make sure it had a little table next to it for their tea and a blanket draped over the back for those times when they’d fall asleep there. He only regretted that he wouldn’t be there to tuck the blanket over them._

They were probably asleep right now. Lurien didn’t want to disturb them, as much as he wanted a cup of tea to warm himself up. maybe something stronger 

He set up his paints, mostly piling them on his lap, put his glasses back on, sighed and blinked a few times, and started his work.  


He had the skyline of the city memorized, and could probably paint it blindfolded with his off hand. Hundreds of sketches of it filled his sketchbooks, and he’d commissioned painting after painting of the skyline for various nobles. He’d spent many long days and nights studying it, to understand the big picture along with the thousands of small details creating it. 

Tonight he wasn’t going to bother about small details, about exact placement of windows and shapes of spires. He worked in short, sharp, messy strokes, ignoring the usual graceful curves of buildings for angular, jagged lines. The city looked alien. Angry. Still familiar. 

Lurien set down his brush at exactly the sixth passing of the guard, just before dawn, when the city would start to wake up. Already he could hear some moment from downstairs, servants starting to get up. 

his hands were covered in paint. Bright orange streaks, along the side of his fingers and the side of his face, where he’d accidentally put the wrong end of his paint brush up against his jaw while he was thinking. 

Lamps in the city started to light again, illuminating his painting. 

The skyline of the city of tears, rendered in sharp, layered brushshades in shades of violent orange. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell with me @two-am-art on tumblr!
> 
> Lurien put on your glasses challenge it will make your head hurt less I am speaking from experience.


End file.
